Ric Edelman: Here’s What Today’s Billionaires Are Doing About Aging

Ric Edelman: It's Friday, September 8th. Coming up on today's show, The New Age of Aging with my special guest, Ken Dychtwald. You're not going to want to miss this one.

You are a billionaire. That means you have far more money than you could ever spend, far more than you could ever give to your children. Even after you make them billionaires, you're still a billionaire. What are you going to do with your money? If you're like most billionaires, you're going to give it away. Bill Gates is a good illustration. So is Melinda French Gates. They have donated billions of dollars to everything from a cure for malaria to clean water.

There's nothing new about this good behavior of the very richest. Andrew Carnegie built 1600 libraries throughout the United States a century ago. He bought the island of Saint John in the Caribbean and gave most of it to the US government as a national park.

Billionaires and Investing in the Future

So what would you do with your billions of dollars? I'm seeing a trend among some of today's billionaires. They're spending massive amounts of money to cure aging. They want to find a way for all of us to live forever. Robert Nelson has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a company called Altos Labs. That's a biotech company trying to rejuvenate cells and eliminate disease. But he's not just doing this philanthropically. He's doing this out of motivated self-interest. He's trying hard to stay alive. According to one press story, he takes almost 12 drugs a day, including rapamycin, metformin, taurine and nicotinamide mononucleotide. I never even heard of that. All of these drugs are supposed to prevent illness and extend longevity. He also gets an MRI twice a year. He sees a dermatologist every three months.

He has annual blood tests to detect cancer and he says he works out in an electric suit that emits low frequency impulses to build muscle and improve his health. His wife says he has a big fear of death, and he's not the only one.

Altos, the company he's invested hundreds of millions of dollars into, has gotten a total of $3 billion in investments. It's the best funded biotech startup ever. We're all rooting for him. But the company's research is decades away from success. Some of their work has been successful in mice, but there are no human trials yet.

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